ALTHOUGH far away, recent North American hurricanes have big implications for all of us here in Frome and East Somerset.
Scientists say that these seasonal winds have been turned into record-breaking megastorms because the oceans are getting warmer, and that’s a symptom that the world’s climate is now changing very fast. Meanwhile, massive wildfires rage in western USA, Canada and Siberia because there has been no rain, and the ice at the North Pole is melting.
Scientists have been predicting for several decades that these chaotic climate changes would happen, because the modern world has been burning so much coal, gas and oil. Our business and political leaders did not take their warnings seriously enough and this is the result. So we should listen to their predictions now about what this will mean and start planning realistically for future survival.
The obvious step we need to take, more urgently than any other, is to switch as quickly as we possibly can from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Frome has led the way in moving towards green energy in Somerset, but this has to be supported by our national government so that the money is there and the fossil fuels can be forced out. Our small electric car-share schemes should be massively expanded and all public transport electrified. People whose work depends on fossil fuels need to be supported to transfer to other jobs, and those of us who fly regularly will need to find alternatives.
Farmers around the planet can expect dramatic crop failures because of more frequent droughts and floods. This will effect price and availability of food and drink in our local shops and cafes. So the second most important thing we need to do is make our local areas as food-resilient as possible, and try to make Britain self-sufficient if needs be. This means supporting intense local food growing in gardens and allotments, as we did in WW2, but also making a plan with our local farmers.
As glaciers and ice caps melt, we can expect the sea level to rise and swamp many of the world’s major cities including London (and probably West Somerset too), possibly within a few decades. We should identify all the major toxic hazards in future flood areas – like nuclear power stations and chemical waste dumps for instance – and either remove or safely contain them. Also, if major modern cities go down, we will need a strong, devolved, local democracy to keep things running.
The situation is somewhat urgent, and I hope that together we can start facing these unavoidable challenges, however unwelcome, because we care about our young people. The truth is that the world we are educating them for is going to be a very different one, so practical skills and resilience training need to be at the centre of their curriculum now.
The message from this summer’s extreme weather events is clear; we need to make a different plan for our future resilience, and act on it locally. The message from our history is also clear; we’ve done it before, and we CAN do it again.
Theo Simon,
Prospective Green Party Candidate,
Somerton and Frome
